Leadership Reflections: Parent Leadership

Abstract

There are many types of leadership but little known is parent leadership – how parental skills are applied to the workplace. Libraries depend more on soft skills that facilitate work and advance an organization. How individuals work together in an organization is just as critical as the work they accomplish. This depends on the ability of employees to develop and utilize their soft skills complementing their technical skills and expertise. As leaders focus more on behavior, they may tap into their parenting techniques in order to coach, guide, direct, and resolve conflicts. While a leader may not be able to ground an employee or take away their TV watching privileges, they might find themselves resorting to similar techniques in their management.     

Leadership Reflections: Organizational Culture

Abstract

Organizations function as small societies with their unique behaviors, patterns, and communication. Organizational culture describes how individuals work within libraries and the patterns, assumptions, values, attitudes, and behavior that help an organization to operate within its environment and achieve, or not achieve, its mission. Effective leaders must understand the operational framework of their libraries in order to be successful in managing or to change the culture in support of strategic goals. Changing the culture of an organization is difficult and a long-term process with a realistic understanding of the current behaviors and a determined vision for how an organization should work. There are some specific strategies that may aid leaders in transforming a library culture into a productive and effective set of behaviors that will contribute to a library’s success.     

Leadership and Social Justice

ABSTRACT

Leaders have tremendous influence not only in their organizations but for the profession and within the communities they serve. Librarianship has strong core values that are the foundation of our services but librarians also create an environment that supports diversity of opinions. How does a library leader balance social justice while serving the broad needs of a community? Is there an inherent conflict between personal perspectives and the encompassing multiple viewpoints? Library leaders may face difficult decisions in determining social justice issues within their libraries considering personal beliefs, institutional responsibilities, and community impacts. Every library leader has opportunities to address social justice issues within libraries and in so doing, will advance community goals of inclusiveness of all members.     

'Goslob is a Boy's Name'

This class-based case study explores how firmly established are primary school children's gender expectations and how far a primary school environment serves to reinforce or challenge their expectations. Children of differing ages responded to a specially written story framework. Their responses indicated a gender stereotyping which influenced interpretation. Implications for teaching are discussed.     

The effects of relationship quality and switching barriers on customer loyalty

Because the cost of attracting new customers is much higher than the cost of retaining old customers, keeping customers loyal is a crucial issue for service firms. This research explores how relationship quality and switching barriers influence customer loyalty. Relationship quality consists of two aspects: satisfaction and trust. Antecedents of satisfaction and trust are explored. To test the proposed research model, a survey research methodology was used. Paper survey was distributed to mobile phone users in Taiwan. A total of 311 valid questionnaires were returned. Structural equation modeling was used to test hypotheses. Satisfaction, trust, and switching barriers have positive effects on loyalty. In terms of antecedents, it was found that playfulness and service quality impact satisfaction while service quality and intimacy affect trust. From a managerial perspective, this research suggests that practitioner should not only keep improving service quality, but also provide playfulness to ensure customer satisfaction. Service providers should also build relationship quality and switching barriers to reduce the possibility of defection and enhance customer loyalty.